Unbloggishly, here we read from the top down - so the month begins here at the top!

Server Crash - May 1st

It was another busy morning for me out in the real world, so SirDarth kept busy pet-levelling, while MistressDomino did a little bit of selling - not that she actually has all that much to sell now, but every nine million or so helps.

Around lunchtime Bladesrus returned to Last Chaos, and happily took back her horse, now level 35, which SirPerivale had been holding, passing across the ten heaven stones she'd promised. Stavanic has now decided that he doesn't want an actual second mount, he'll just transfer the one we did make for him between characters as needed - but he would like two more pet horses, level 21 or so each. He seems strangely reticent about actually giving me anything for the work involved, though...

Well, the afternoon was fairly busy, starting off with a general moving-around of items, which restocked MistressDomino's inventory a little bit, including those ten heaven stones. That still left just about two hours for MrChuckNorris to head for Prokion, though.

The back room I go for was already in use, so I headed on round a bit further. I found I didn't actually still have any platinum super skill pills in Chuck's inventory, which seemed a little strange, but he was carrying ten Skill Boxes, and one of them gave me a pssp. Despite the room I ended up in not being ideal, I did manage to get 603 skill points in the hour, but I decided not to use another pill (which would have been a non-platinum one, for double rather than triple experience) as the place was crowded - and that was probably the right decision, as the second hour did only bring in 166 points, which was a slightly lower kill rate.

SsnowboardS, who was in a solo party with me and Ratel, did tip me off about halfway through the second hour that "my" room was free, so I ran back to it - but it wasn't long before a mage called Predator24 turned up. I think she was the player who'd been in residence when I first looked in. Still, she was concentrating on the Sergeants, while Chuck gets more skill exp from the Orc Axemen, so we got along okay.

I noticed that Predator24 was using one of the week-long + 30% experience potions from an Easter Egg, so she is obviously in the final stages of her Prokion time. Chuck's Eggs didn't produce anything as good as that today, just a Green Stone accessory, 50 gold times six, 10 gamma wave energy, 10 herb trunks, and 10 quality stones - so a set of all three types there. Why it's the mid-range, 3 health point herb trunks rather than the 5-point herb leaves I've no idea, as the quality stones and the gamma wave energies are both the 5-point type.

In all Chuck added 792 skill points, along with 1820 pet points, so the time when he can get unfrozen does draw nearer. In theory he ought really to aim for around three times his current total, but I don't think he is really ever going to have to worry about the sp needed for the skills after level 100.

During the swapping-around, I finally passed the white pet colouring crystal that BasheR had given me over to MistressDomina, so now her mount is a flawless white. She also exchanged her pony, which was only about halfway though level 1, for Darth's level 25 one, so Darth went out with a level 1 pony for a change - and with his highly-enhanced armour, had no problems at all against his usual Berserker. As he was no longer carrying the unmounted level 35 horse for Bladesrus, SirPerivale was able to go out with his current level 24 one to the Butchers over my early evening food break; with just the +3 armour and shield, his health bar once again did tend to fluctuate a bit, but not dangerously.

However, when I got back to my computers after the break, both SirDarth and SirPerivale were just not damaging their monsters, and not being damaged either... moving away from their starting location, no new monsters appeared, so it wasn't long before I knew that it was a mass disconnection, and one of the worst kind, where if you log out and then try to enter your details again the server thinks you are "already logged in". It was only Auzura that was affected; after a while, perhaps half an hour, they managed to get over the "already logged in" thing, but all the Auzura sub-servers remained resolutely on "Maintenance".

The shoutbox was of course filled with angry or disappointed people - people who'd been using expensive potion-buffs like the platinum blessed iris, or had been in Egeha, or in the final hard-to-get-to rooms of the Tomb of Theos. And the "maintenance" went on...

I logged my Cariae SirDarth in for a while over on that server, as the crash only took Auzura down - he's level 33, and just a bit nerfed for skill exp gain, but he was able to kill a few Poison Mists easily enough, and then he went to Prokion Temple and killed a few orcs there. Ratel got in touch to suggest a solo party, but he was in a different sub-server. And I didn't feel inclined to stay there long.

After a brief outing in Guild Wars, just a trip to the Secret Garden in Pre-Searing, I found that the Auzura server was finally functional again, after probably about 90 minutes of downtime, so SirDarth was able to get back to his new pony, which was well into level 8 by late evening, and soon afterwards Rage went online too. When Argoth heard that I was at the Sphinx Fighters without anyone to party with (as WhiteMessiah2, who was there, was about to log out), he decided to change across to Ratel and join me, which was a great idea.

So, a level 45 rogue and a level 38 temple knight were just about able to take on the Elite Sphinx Speer Man, but Ratty knew a level 31 cleric, Darkangelx, who is actually in Norcaine with their mage, GothicPresence, who had the location on her scroll, so invited her out to join us. It is a bit risky at that level, and things were at times a bit laggy, so Dark did actually die a couple of times - the second time was bad, another archer, hopefully inadvertantly, lured a Speer Man right on to her. Still, she stayed with us, and we continued until she reached level 32. It's handy having a healer in the party, it saves a fortune in health potions...

By log-out time Rage had added 22.08% experience, so is halfway through her level now - and 728 pet points, which were enough to get her faithful horse up to level 33. The new technical point was quickly invested in Armour Increase, an extra 5 to defence could make all the difference.

MistressDomino had a look around the shops in Auzura-1, and after snapping up +4 Vanishing Tiara and Vanishing Long Shoes as upgrades to her +3 ones at only 200,000 gold each, she went on a bit of a spree, starting with a level 33 titan sword, a Dictator Sword +15, for 100 million - which seemed a good price to me, and indeed I saw a +14 sword just after making my purchase being offered for 120 million. The bloodseals were nice too, with 6 added to attack and 55 to hit rate. I then bought a rogue level 46 Rapid Shirt and Rapid Pants - the same items that Rage is currently wearing and will soon outgrow, but these are +11, and thus I think worth 50 million each. Rage may not get a whole lot of use out of them, but my next characters to level up should be glad of the extra defence.

The advantage of having the level 33 titan sword +15 is that once MrChuckNorris starts to level up, he will very soon be able to switch to using it, which will free up the level 29 one to be converted for MistressDomina to use as a mage staff, so she won't have to wait so long before she can farm her skill points in earnest. It all adds to the variety, it seems a while since I played her...

MistressDomino also bought 200 experience boosters at 900,000 gold each, hoping to resell them for about 50% more - we'll have to see if she has any luck with that during her next selling session.

Various Adventures - May 2nd

SirDarth did attempt to do a bit of pet-levelling on his current pony overnight, but, with another disconnection on Auzura-3, and later some passer-by killing his Berserker and thus just leaving him standing there for an hour or two, it wasn't particularly successful. Still, progress was made, so that the pony reached level 13 as lunchtime approached.

MistressDomino was also trying to sell stuff, and did reasonably well, though the experience boosters didn't sell, there must have still been people around selling them cheaply. In the later part of the morning I did some moving around of items between characters, so Darth took some time off and MistressDomino got a restock of some items.

It was probably lucky that Darth wasn't down in Merac for that half hour or so, as when he got back there was a level 50 Pandora Beast perilously close by - so he immediately logged out again, and Rage rode down and dealt with it. The drop was 42,400, which more than covered the expenses involved I guess. After that, Darth returned, and settled back in.

For the afternoon, after a hint or two from Ratel, Rage logged in, and headed for the Sphinx Fighters. Ratel join her almost at once - and ZODIAC, the level 39 titan, and xXAcheronXx, the level 39 royal knight, turned up there pretty quickly and joined our party. Ratel reached level 39 before long, too.

A rogue called SugaRuSH was also fighting there solo - Zodiac was the first to notice that she was afk and being attacked, and we managed to save her a couple of times before she realised what was happening.

It was a pretty long session, and it was still going on when I logged out to go off in search of food. Zodiac was away for a while as he had to go shopping, but CrownedSalvation took over the titan duties. Ratel did have to leave, while Acheron went off to help a Polish friend, Sopel, I assumed he was just helping him to level in Juno, as Sopel was a new knight character, only level 3, but eventually Ache asked for help, saying he was nearby, but with a few Sphinx Fighters in the way, and checking the map, there he was, so we moved across, and cleared out a Fighter or two. So, Sopel may well be around the lowest-level character to get to that location without the use of Recall. He stayed in the party, and quickly put on a few more levels.

WhiteMessiah2 got in touch, and her arrival seemed like my excuse to leave. She's about seven levels ahead of me, so, rogue-wise, I left the team in good hands. Rage had by then gone up a total of 39.60%, and added 1347 pet points; still not a single skill point though, while they give nice experience the sphinx types, when one is 18 or 19 levels below them, only give 1 skill experience per kill.

By the end of the food break, SirDarth's pony had become a horse, as they do when they reach level 16 - and by later in the evening, level 18 had been reached, so things are moving along nicely there.

The evening session was a bit broken up. It did start with MrChuckNorris heading for Prokion, but he ended up in a not ideal corridor; guildie Legacy, a level 28 rogue, dropped by for a while, which made things slightly more crowded. Chuck just used a double-sp super skill pill, and got 358 skill points from the hour...so it was probably just as well he didn't use the more expensive triple-sp platinum variety. He stayed on a little while after that, and even went into our favourite room when it wasn't being fully used... the total skill point gain was 381, along with 1059 pet points, so not very dramatic, though it did get him to a total of 15k unused skill points.

After Kaerella made a brief trip to the Sphinx types, only to find the place too busy, it seemed a good idea to give MistressDomina an outing, so she headed for the orcs in Prokion Temple. I wanted to see if her armour would be good enough still, after the recent changes, though I downloaded and used a pack of five chaos smelting stones first to upgrade it by one per piece... and it did seem to be okay, though I'd not guarantee it for use in the back room without the occasional use of a health potion, as the axemen and sergeants do tend to come in as a big mob sometimes.

Skill point gain seemed a bit slow, I must say, though hopefully that will improve when the +13 mage staff is replaced by a +15 one... which will have been made out of Chuck's current sword, courtesy of Collector Ryu. Still, I think MistressDomina will need to use a number of Mall-type potions if she is to farm her skill points at an acceptable rate.

Anyway, MD added 801 pet points, and 101 skill points, enough to be able to get the third level of Expert Weaponsmith, and then levels two and three of Basic Alchemy. Yes, she is still in the process of maximising her special skills, sigh...weaponsmith and armoursmith take 690 sp each, plus more when a character reaches levels 32, 42 and 52, while alchemy takes 447.

Ratel has started a couple of new characters, this server's version of Leopardknight and a healer called Thabitha, so he spent the evening working on her. In an effort to work out how the "one-third chance of success" with an ordinary smelting stone actually works, he upgraded her level 5/7 "Breeze" armour set to +3, and kindly passed it over to a level 2 healer of mine, Barbarella, after use, on the feeling that nobody would be much interested in actually buying it. Only three of the pieces had reached "able to use bloodseal gem" stage, even though Thabitha's levelling has been reduced in speed to 25%, to help her gain plenty of skill points as she goes.

So, a fairly varied day. Who knows what tomorrow will bring...?

Back to the Tomb - May 3rd

Despite it being a Sunday morning, SirDarth started fairly early, getting his current horse up to level 19 during the morning. Darth did sight a level 50 Blood Frenzy-type Pandora's Beast, but it was over on the far side of the clearing, and seemed far enough away not to be a menace.

Feeling that Prokion Temple ought not to be very busy on a Sunday morning, I sent MrChuckNorris over there for an hour or so's sp-farming. It was actually fairly busy, but the upstairs back room, thankfully, was not in use, with just one player wall-hugging - she left fairly soon. So, Chuck triggered his remaining super skill pill, for double skill exp - and also one of the red and white training pills, which adds another 15%. Not a lot, true, but they do come from the skill boxes and cannot be traded, so one may as well use them. It meant that instead of 5500 skill exp each, or 11000 with the ssp active, I got an extra 825 skill exp per Orc Axeman.

The hour yielded 388 skill points, which seemed pretty good. A rogue had come in about five minutes before the pills ended, and asked nicely if she could take over, which seemed fair enough as I wasn't going to have the time for a second hour anyway, so I gave her the Battle Roar buff, and left her to it, going off down the corridor to the area I'd been busy in yesterday. In all the session yielded 488 skill points, and 1420 pet points.

SirPerivale came online for the lunch break, to do a little work on the level 24 horse he's taking care of; with his +3 shield and armour, and 23 levels of Armour Increase, he had a defence figure of 791, which was enough to keep him healthy fighting Butchers... or fighting one Butcher at a time, anyway. The horse reached level 25, so that meant an extra 10 to defence on his next outing, over the early evening food break.

Before that, however, was the afternoon session, which went on an hour longer than usual. Rage went out to the Auzura-3 Sphinx Fighters, but it wasn't long before I got an invitation from crownedSalvation to join a Tomb of Theos party on Auzura-1. There was a level 42 royal knight called KaRmA, a level 51 assassin-type rogue called Epica, a level 56 mage called Katianna, and we also had a specialist sorcerer called Salop. Katianna and KaRmA did leave as the afternoon progressed, but we gained the level 40 titan Hyperlogic, and we didn't do badly - though I did get to use two resurrection scrolls, annoyingly against the very same Screaming Zombie... otherwise my many dashes to the north-side wall of the corridor worked. Those Zombies certainly don't like rogues, sigh...

It wasn't long before I reached level 46 - this meant I could wear the level 51 shirt and pants, but with their higher level of upgrade, the level 46 pair still give me more defence, so it doesn't loook as if I can go into battle looking like a lion tamer, unfortunately. Unless I upgrade those pieces to match, of course.

The afternoon had its quiet bits, but also its excitements. A level 38 sorcerer called Marcx did a bit of ks-ing, and kept asking to join the party even though we explained that he was more than 15 levels below our top member, and would thus be "capped" and get very little experience. He kept ks-ing, and in the end Epica decided, as we were on a PvP server, to kill him. This was enough to turn Epica's name red. And wouldn't you know it, within minutes a vengeful member of the top Auzura guild, Vendetta (I gather that, while they are on all the servers, elsewhere they are no longer top dogs), a rogue called BlueRogue, arrived, and killed her - at least twice I think. Luckily she wasn't annoyed enough to want to wipe out the whole party.

By the time the party ended, I'd gone up 59.13%, and added 1015 pet points; I didn't get any skill points against such high-level monsters of course. back in town I finally had enough stat points in Constitution to get the level 32 passive skill Mind Training, which increases my magic evasion by 25 for the cost of 276 skill points; one more level's worth of Constitution and I'll be able to get Defence Guard too, which for 292 sp will increase my physical defence by 100 - and be able to wear my new hood and boots as well, which will add another 98.

Zenderfly got in touch, asking if I was busy - but she was only interested in seeing if I had a character on Cariae with some spare horn beast eyes, as she has decided to get herself the second sort of "human tribe" pet, and perhaps a useful low level healer weapon for a new character of hers, Taldea. My stocks of "quest items" are actually on one of Elvastar's characters, so I couldn't help there, but I could at least find her a healer Event Weapon. She commented that, with three Stone of Shadows accessories equipped, her junior-level healer didn't have to bother with good armour.

After the food break, as things were running rather late there wasn't a whole lot of time before the Quiz, but Rage did get back to the Sphinx Fighters for a little while. The Quiz itself, as we had been warned, was at its new time of 8:30pm UK time, and luckily the questions seemed to be the same as last week, mainly - and they did leave the doors open for us to get back in, which was just as well. Kaerella was speedy enough to get back for the moonstones and the heaven stones, after we'd got the tool aids safely, even though on one entrance she got booted out again immediately as she didn't have time to get to the correct side of the room - Rage didn't get back for the moonstones, but just got back in time for the heaven stones, thankfully.

After the Quiz there was the usual Sunday night problem of the overloaded servers trying to keep up - trying to log SirDarth back in gave me a black screen instead of Randol, but before long things settled down. Speech was laggy, as was browsing the Merchant House; Ratel spotted a +4 level 45/47 armour set for 21 million, and grabbed it, I didn't realise at first that it was that set, thinking idly of maybe 35/37. It was quite a bargain, though after the purchase Ratel found that the gloves and boots were in fact only +3. Still, a hard armour set to find, especially those boots, so he did well. Not wanting to risk breaking anything, Ratel made sure to sell the last of his heaven stones, and then asked if I could sell him a couple of lucky smelting stones, which I did, at a suitably discounted price.

Rage did go back out to the Sphinx Fighters, but before long Auzura-3, at least, gave up the struggle and had a mass disconnection - no great surprise there. So, Rage had just added another 10.45% this evening, and 342 pet points - plus a skill point, even. That made her total gain today 69.58%, 1357 pet points, and that skill point.

We are just starting an "Almost Cinco de Mayo Event" now, apparently, which may lead to some in-game bonus times - 50% extra experience for 24 hours, for a start, if enough people buy enough Mall items today and tomorrow. Sounds good to me... Oh, and SirDarth's horse was comfortably into level 22 by the time he logged out for the night.

Kaerella's Turn for the Tomb - May 4th

SirDarth had another busy day, which meant his horse-in-training moved up to level 25, and was close to level 26 by the evening. MrChuckNorris logged in in the morning rather later - the idea was for him to move some of his stock of Skill Boxes across to MistressDomina for her to open, as he has way too many of the 15% extra "training skill books", and they can't be traded - but one thing I'd forgotten was that the super skill pills can't be traded either, so all I was able to transfer back to Chuck were some of the platinum super skill pills.

So, an hour of triple skill exp can't be bad, and Chuck headed out to Prokion to use a pssp. The room I like was empty, so Chuck settled in there for his hour, and got a massive 609 skill points before the pill ran out. As usual he stayed a little longer, and the total skill point gain was 632, plus 1058 pet points, which meant that his drake is now four levels ahead of him, at level 31.

After lunch SirDarth had a tip-off from another pet leveller that somebody had killed the Grand Red Dragon close by, but hadn't killed the Cerebrii, which was a bit untidy of them, so to avoid any future problem for Darth, Kaerella logged on, rode down, and got rid of them.

The royal knight Corbenik got in touch, and checked what Kae's level was now - he too was level 62, and proposed that we should team up to fight the Screaming Zombies in the Tomb of Theos, just the two of us. So, I moved across to Auzura-4, and joined him there.

He suggested, after the first Zombie kill went okay, that we should both start a Blessed Iris, which gives double experience for three hours - and, as the afternoon was yet young, that is what we did. It wasn't long before Corbenik levelled up; I was starting from only 14% of the way into level 62, though. Each kill gave about 0.75% experience each, with the Iris, so we'd need to kill about 115 Zombies for me to reach level 63, which, considering the time it takes to kill one, as they are fairly strong, being level 100, was quite a target. We made it, though, with a little time to spare; we did, at Corbenik's urging, even do a few more after the three hours were up, but it was soon time to end the marathon session.

The place was fairly busy, but everyone seemed to manage pretty well; towards the end an archer called DerBoss did cause a few problems by luring Zombies and not being able to deal with them, so that their health reset and they wandered back along the corridor making a menace of themselves for other people already fighting their own monster, but I don't think anyone got killed that way. I think Corb had died once earlier, but if so he must have used a resurrection scroll, he was back in action very quickly. I very seldom even thought of healing during a battle, only between them, my job was to lure, to use Slow Shot, and to hug the wall if the Zombie got up close and personal. There were a couple of occasions when my health got perilously low, but I survived. At one stage early on an archer was helping us, just by healing us as we fought, which was nice - and towards the end a rogue, SilenGrex, assisted us with Snare, which made life easier.

In total Kae went up 93.95%, and even added a skill point, plus 1382 pet points for SirFrancis, Kae's drake. Reaching level 63 meant that Kae was able to learn the seventh level of Arrow of Silence, for 350 skill points, which means that that skill, "silencing" the target's special attack skills for ten seconds, now has an 80% chance of success, and hits more powerfully too. The next such skill upgrade, at level 66, will be more useful though, Slow Shot will have its "power" increased, and also the slow-down will improve from 55% to 60%...

The evening session saw Rage heading for the Sphinx types. The area was deserted when I arrived, but a level 36 healer called Kukli4kataBG soon arrived, and suggested a team-up. She was a little bit over-eager to begin with, and we did both die fighting the Elite Sphinx Speer Man, but, concentrating on the non-elite ones, we did okay, After a while a guildie of hers, Ninatsu, a level 32 rogue, came to join us; it was very handy to have two ranger-type rogues along, and we were able to go for the Elite again. Nina used Snare first, and if it didn't take, then I'd use it...or even if it did take, with the Elite one, I'd need to use it, as he takes a long time to die.

I'm sure both Nina and Kukli died a number of times, but they were back in action so quickly that I could usually only tell by checking to see if they still had my horse buffs on them. It was another good long session - they both levelled up twice, and I finally reached level 47, putting on 48.22% experience and 1457 pet points. I think Kukli said she had very few skill points anyway, so deaths didn't matter greatly - she plans to farm sp at about level 40 apparently.

I'd been able to put on my new "Fatal" armour set hood and boots as soon as I levelled, and also put on the shirt and pants, just to get them bloodsealed. Back in town I was able to finally get the level 38 skill (requiring 17 stat points in Constitution - two levels, 292 skill points, 100 more defence) Defence Guard, as well as level six of Detect Weakness, which increases my hit rate rather usefully, for 200 skill points. I'm down to just over thirteen thousand unused skill points now, which ought to keep Rage going for a while.

There was another spawning of the mobs of Pandora's Beasts; the GMs made the announcement, but I knew before then as I could see them behind SirDarth. I moved him a little way back; it seems these spawnings are so common that nobody bothered to come down into Merac and clear them away...

Mad Monster Spawn Krash - May 5th

The "Cinco de Mayo" Last Chaos event seems to have got off to a good start, with enough people spending enough aeria points to qualify for a "tier" offer, meaning that we get 24 hours of 50% extra experience. Not that this affects SirDarth of course; he did stay online yesterday just long enough to get his current horse up to level 26, and the horse did reach level 27 at around lunchtime, and 28 later in the day.

MrChuckNorris didn't benefit from the extra experience either, as his experience gain is still frozen; I managed to get him along to Prokion Temple in the morning though for a one-hour session using a pssp, which yielded 612 skill points, and staying there afterwards for a while made the total 686, along with 1308 pet points. Eight Easter Eggs got picked up, giving us 10 gamma wave energy, 10 herb trunks, 50 gold twice, 500 gold, a magic stone, a tool aid - and the star item, a Greatest Experience Potion, giving 30% more experience gain for a week.

SirPerivale did a bit of pet levelling too over lunch, and there was some exchanging of items afterwards, before Kaerella headed out for the Sphinx Fighters, and the Elite Sphinx Speer Man. 50% extra experience there still isn't actually very much, but as the sphinx types are just about her level now, at least she gets some skill points.

However, Kae's rather boring little stint ended early when Darth spotted one of those Blood Frenzy-type level 50 Pandora's Beasts, which somebody had released from a Pandora's Box, nearby - so Rage was needed to ride down into Merac and deal with it. It dropped 113,600 gold, which is about the maximum they ever give, which was nice.

The Border Guard Captain at the edge of Merac village had a new quest for Rage, however - to go to the third level of Maargadum Jail and kill thirty Beast Flyers. So, Rage rode on down to the Jail's entrance, carefully applied the horse buffs, and ran on down. With her pretty good new armour, Rage was able to take the Flyers on in the central area there, without any healing, and the quest was quickly done; the reward in experience, from Great Magician Minearm, wasn't much, 831,000, but the 50,000 gold was useful - and he also handed over ten Physical Attack Potions, which MistressDomino should be able to sell.

Great Magician Minearm also gave Rage a new quest, "Worry of Minearm", to collect three rings from "Beast Leaders" - which are in fact the magic-wielding Beast Crawlers on Maargadum Jail's fourth level. Considering that they did have a nasty habit, over on Cariae, of killing Kaerella when she attempted that quest, I think we may well not be able to help ol' Minearm with that one...

So, before SirPerivale took over for the food break, Rage added 1.55% experience, 6 skill points, and 76 pet points - before that Kaerella had gained 12.15%, 23 skill points, and 731 pet points, which had been enough to get SirFrancis up to level 33.

After the food break, things started off pretty promisingly, with Ratel volunteering to team with Rage at the Sphinx Fighters, and Kukli4kataBG also getting in touch and meeting us there. Ninatsu was there too, and another useful rogue called Zaphira. To begin with we were separate parties; I'm afraid Ratel died when he and I attacked the Elite Speer Man, I had a very peculiar error, not lag and not the regular "muddy ground" thing which can be cured by mounting up and moving, I could type and my messages appeared, but I couldn't move, or target, or change pets, and could only watch as Ratel slumped to the ground. I relogged and returned, and we went on. We decided to form up into a five-person party, and were considering moving over to the Tomb of Theos for a good long session, enhanced by the 50% extra experience boost. Healing, three people with Snare, Ratel's stuns and buffs...

The only problem was that the server was becoming extremely laggy, with "lag spikes" when everything seemed to stop - only you just knew that the Sphinx Fighters and Speer Men weren't affected, so it was extremely dangerous. It was like a messy disconnection that didn't quite go all the way, and it soon made playing impossible. So, we resolved to try again tomorrow, and went our separate ways.

Ratel changed over to his low-level healer Thabitha, and I decided to switch to a new mage I'd started earlier, MistressSabina, whose adventures against foxes, deer and wolves in Juno wouldn't be disastrously messed up by a lag spike or a disconnection. My target is eventually to get her to level 10, and donate some skill points to the "Discipline" guild. I've not upgraded any of her skills, though she has almost a full set of the 5/7 armour now, she just needs the circlet - Thabitha donated the skirt, since she got it as a drop. The lag continued for a while, sometimes foxes ignored my attacks until they suddenly appeared dead at my feet, but gradually order was restored.

Thabitha got the entrance to Velpist Temple onto her memory scroll, and I decided that Sabina might as well do the same, as, apart from the occasional strolling Elder Werewolf, there aren't any real problems in getting a low-level character there. Thabitha was inside, getting some useful ready-plussed drops, but as the pre-maintenance "mad monster spawn" was due to start shortly, and its location is fairly near to the Temple, I resolved to see if I could get a level 7 mage there. The Great Horn Beasts were a bit tricky, but following other people racing to get to the spot, I made it.

Before the first wave of monsters were unleashed, [GM]Krash spawned some "hands" of loot, which as usual can't be picked up for a few seconds - Sabina managed to get an item drop booster and a large attack potion, plus a few minor things. And then things got tricky, since, as well as the high-level monsters, there are Great Horn Beasts and Elder Werewolves there which could easily kill a level 7 mage. However, I assisted in the attacks on some of the big guys, and added more than half a level easily, reaching level 8.

The only problem was that we then had one of the regular server krashes - so everyone respawned back in town, and with the "rollback" that involves, my experience and loot had vanished. I hurried back, but this time somebody pulled a large number of the cave spirits onto us in one group, and I died. I didn't immediately respawn in town, though, i stayed to watch. The Darkmind Terrain from the Tomb was their, and Anubis Archers, and some Sphinx Commanders, and things I'd never heard of, such as the level 135 Patriarch Botis from Quanian's cave and the level 136 Fluton from the Golem's Cave. And more loot was spawned - and again the server krashed.

This affected SirDarth too of course; and this time, so that at least the local monsters wouldn't kill me, I went back as him, so to speak. The fighting was just about over, but at least I managed to pick up, and retain, a couple of item drop boosters and a couple of skill point boosters, large defence and attack potions, and a pair of tool aids. It seemed to me that there were quite a few low-level people there; maybe not Sabina's level, but Darth's at least. There to offer moral support I'm sure, and of course help carry the loot back to town.

With the krashes, I have no idea if the special "worms" mentioned as part of the Cinco de Mayo series of events were actually spawned, and if they were defeated within the time limit. Still, Darth was able to head back to Merac for some more pet levelling afterwards with a slightly heavier inventory - and Sabina really didn't want the experience boost from helping kill boss monsters, skill points are what she needs.

More Easter Eggs to Open - May 6th

All the servers apparently passed the test of the Mad Monster Spawn with added Worms, and that meant that, from about 5:00am this morning UK time I think, not only did we have 50% extra experience - but 50% extra skill exp too.

So, MrChuckNorris, the world's manliest titan, took advantage of the extra skill exp, and headed out for Prokion Temple of course. I just managed to fit two hours in before lunch, though the second hour was slightly interrupted by lunch preparations and a phone call. I decided to use the 15% bonus skill exp "training spells", and the first hour gave 360 skill points, while the second one added 307. It was strange, using one of those pills a few days ago with a double experience boost, on the basic 5500 skill exp for killing an orc of one's own level, just added 15% of the basic 5500, so 11825, but using one with this 50% boost gave 15% of the 150% (8250), or 9487 - so almost a whole skill point per kill.

The afternoon session was more of the same, with 351 sp followed by 341... so that the total for the morning and afternoon, including a few outside the 15% extra hours, reached 1369 skill points, plus 3721 pet points. Chuck is now officially ready to have his experience gain unfrozen, though he'll still be working in that favourite back room for a few sessions yet.

It was one of my half-length evening sessions with an early log-out, so I just treated Chuck to one more hour in Prokion Temple - gaining 352 skill points and another 963 pet points. Ratel didn't turn up, or I'd have taken Rage to the Sphinx Fighters, and we might well have met up with the others from yesterday, and maybe even headed for the Tomb of Theos... but without Ratel to rely on there, it seemed safer to keep a low profile. Ratty (and when I use that nickname I think of it in a "Wind in the Willows" type context) could have unlocked Chuck's experience, too... I hope he turns up tomorrow.

Chuck didn't do badly for Easter Eggs, though - ten just had 50 gold, but three had 500 and one had 25,000, while there was also 10 herb trunks twice, 10 quality stones twice, 10 gamma wave energies twice, 10 potions of haste, a green stone, two magic stones, and a pair of tool aids, followed at the end by an experience scroll and a Snowman, which gives double experience gain for 30 minutes, and can be traded.

For the last hour, I changed over to MistressSabina, for a more relaxing time, and got her up to level eight - it would be possible to level her a lot faster, but I am trying to get plenty of skill points as I go, which means going for green-named monsters, or even blue-named ones. She was pretty lucky, though, opening a Pandora's Box and getting five physical attack potions which, at level 12, are fairly valuable. A second Box unleashed a level 30 Blood Wolf style Pandora's Beast, so I briefly changed to SirPerivale, as he is a suitable level to fight such things; he killed it, but it only dropped a small amount of gold.

Sabina tried a third Box too, but that just disgorged a level 20 Sasquatch-style Beast - and I found out, by getting too close, that unlike a regular Sasquatch, it is aggressive! Still, I survived, and just avoided its immediate area while I continued to battle the various varieties of wolf.

I mentioned Sabina's luck, and that extended to the Easter Egg side of things: she got a second "greatest experience potion". It's a shame they can't be traded between accounts, but it's nice to have.

The "Cinco de Mayo" task today to earn another 24 hours of 50% extra experience and skill exp, plus this time pet experience too, was for all the servers between them to buy 2500 of a special "Shots" package from the Item Mall, either individually from the in-game store or in ten-packs from the web-based version. It doesn't seem all that useful a package to me, but let's hope that enough people are tempted, one could easily get used to all this bonus experience, et cetera.

Chuck Levels Up - May 7th

When I logged MrChuckNorris in in the morning, some time after SirDarth had started, I took him off to Prokion Temple on the usual subserver, Auzura-3, and found to my disappointment that, it seemed, not enough of those "Shots" packages had been sold - the skill exp was just the regular 5500 per Orc Axeman. Still, since he was there, Chuck started a platinum super skill pill for triple skill exp, and settled in in his usual room - and got 542 skill points in the hour that the pssp was active, 550 in all before he logged out.

Over lunch, however, while SirDarth and SirPerivale were both busily pet-levelling. Ratel's titan, Argoth, was online, and sent a message that the Auzura-4 subserver did have the 50% extra experience and skill exp running, and double pet experience as well. So, Darth swapped across, and found indeed that his horse's pet points did go up two at a time, which is rather useful when the pet starts to get hungry so quickly.

Argoth was able to switch to Ratel and unfreeze Chuck's experience. He was busy in my favourite back room when Chuck got there, so Chuck was looking around for a suitable room or corridor when Argoth announced that he didn't feel too well, and would be logging out soon, so if Chuck wanted to take over the room, he should head back there - which I did.

The skill exp per Orc Axeman was indeed back up to 8250, or 9487 when Chuck started up one of the 15%-bonus "training spells", so the first hour-long pill saw 328 more skill points added, while the second one added 305, the lower number being due to a small computer problem needing a quick log-out and run back. In all by the end of the afternoon, the day's skill point gain had reached 1278 skill points, along with 5201 pet points, which were easily enough to get Chuck's drake to level 32. And, as his experience gain had been unfrozen, Chuck added 282.94% experience, getting him from level 27 to level 30. Not only was he able to use his next +15 weapon, the level 33 Dictator Sword, increasing his physical attack from 546 to 581, he was able to learn the level 30 titan skill Body Crasher, which not only damages the target, it causes the monster to "bleed" for twenty seconds, losing ten health per second. All types of character have to learn their level 30 skill completely before they are allowed to choose which job-path to take - archer or cleric, ranger or assassin, wizard or witch, that kind of thing.

After the early evening food break, Chuck went back for another hour, which was enough to get him into level 31, so a trip back to Randol was needed, to make him officially a Warmaster kind of titan. There had recently been an announcement that GM Stratos was rallying resistance to an undead invasion over on Auzura-5, so MistressSabina fearlessly put in an appearance over there - and despite the number of people in PvP mode, managed to avoid getting PK'd, as she assisted in the demise of some large boss monsters, Helping to kill a Darkmind Terrain actually gave her 40.22% experience; a Blue Dragon isn't as high level, and perhaps her contribution was smaller, but its death just added 11.46%. Not that these figures mean a whole lot of experience at level 8! When the rewards got dropped at the end, by keeping my finger on the "pick up items" key until the red "this item has been reserved for another player" message stopped, I did manage to grab 3 tool aids, 2 skill point boosters, and two heaven stones, plus some potions of haste.

After that excitement, it was time for Chuck to go back to Prokion Temple and use his final "training spell" 15% skill exp boost - only 284 skill points that time, as the skill exp per kill goes down as he goes up in levels above the Orcs. Chuck kept going for a further 65 skill points, in order to get to level 32 so that, upon returning to town, he could learn his first Warmaster (or War Master, either seems correct) skills: Hard Swing, which hits up to three targets with 220% power in a 120 degree sweep, and Giant Body, increasing Chuck's health, or hit points, by 255, taking the total to 2300 at present. There's another useful skill called Smite, with a 70% chance of stunning a foe for five seconds, but I need another level's worth of dexterity before I can get that.

I just managed to get back to town by 9:30 uk time, which was handy as a "Pharaoh's Treasure" event was just starting, with a number of locations announced. The first location I found was just a large group of sphinx soldiers - the second location I got to, courtesy of a memory scroll spot not far away, was in fact the one where the treasure had been, but it had all either been picked up or vanished by then.

In all today Chuck went up from level 27 to level 32, which even with the 50% extra experience switched on was quite an achievement. 454.73% experience gain in a day doesn't happen often, unless power levelling in the Tomb's lower reaches is involved. Chuck added 10,015 pet points in all too - and is ahead by 594 skill points, despite spending 1327 skill points on Giant Body, Hard Swing, Body Crasher, and the Weaponsmithing and Armoursmithing skill levels that become available at level 32. The skill point total did briefly go above twenty thousand, in fact, but from now on it's liable to be downhill all the way.

SirDarth's horse has, thanks to about ten hours of double pet experience as well as the preceding five hours or so, managed to get comfortably into level 33 now. Late in the morning Kaerella helped out by mining some quality stones using tool aids - 40 tool aids, and 40 hammers, meaning 1080 quality stones for Darth. Without that replenishment he'd be running a bit low by now! SirPerivale managed to grab some time with a Butcher too, and his horse is level 28 now.

So, I need to check to see where the next armour for Chuck is being stored at the moment, and I also need to convert his old +15 sword, the level 29 one, into a mage staff for MistressDomina. Yes, now that Chuck is just about to say goodbye to Prokion Temple, it will soon be time for MD to start her skill point farming there in earnest...

Another Level - May 8th

SirDarth and SirPerivale both started pet-levelling nice and early. When Peri logged in there was a level 50 Pandora's Beast close by, so Darth's arrival was postponed slightly while Rage logged on instead and rode down to deal with it - it dropped 42,800 gold, so it wasn't the most generous of Beasts, but all contributions are welcome. However, I soon found that there wasn't any double pet experience going on, so it looks as if not enough people were able to post "Mexican flag" screenshots of coloured pets. Indeed, the few screenies on the forum that I looked at were fairly humdrum, and tended just to show one green, one white, and one red pet, I was assuming that crowds would be gathered together by the bigger guilds for more, well, flag-shaped displays...

Later in the morning I did a lot of shifting items around, mainly to give MistressDomino the latest loot to sell, such as Easter Eggs - but I also took the opportunity to get MrChuckNorris back the Orc Ornaments he now needed for a quest, passed his old level 29 +15 sword across to MistressDomina... and passed Rage's old level 35/37 +4 armour set over to Chuck, along with enough lucky smelting stones to move it up to +6. With his old armour (without his drake equipped) Chuck's physical defence was 652; this went up to 707 with the new set at +4, and 771 after it was upgraded to +6. MD also got her armour upgraded from a mixture of +8 and +9 to straight +10, increasing her defence from 670 to 711; changing from a +13 to a +15 staff meant her magic attack went up from 407 to 486.

There was time before lunch for Chuck to get his quest reward, by handing in the Orc Ornaments in Dratan - where he got a new quest, which involved hunting down and killing 35 Death Goddesses. A quick ride down south from Dratan city, and Chuck found them - they were yellow-named (level 35), and, like most Dratan mobs, aggressive, protective pet-eaters, but Chuck managed to handle them okay, with a little help from his horse buffs, and completed that quest before the lunchtime switch across back to SirPerivale. Chuck had added 1.55% experience, most of it from the two quest rewards, plus 6 skill points and 76 pet points.

With the lack of double pet experience I'd assumed that everything was back to normal, but, once Chuck was back in Prokion Temple after lunch, Argoth pointed out that this wasn't so - we did at least have double skill experience running. Chuck had finished his 15% "training spells", but did still have one last 50% "platinum skill pill", and with that was able to get, at level 32, 9625 skill exp from the Orc Sergeants, and 6875 from the Orc Axemen. The hour yielded 281 skill points; the whole afternoon added 549.

Argoth had decided that he wanted to upgrade the Norcaine guild by a level, so Ratel passed the Guild Master position over to Chuck, who passed it back to Argoth; once Argoth had done his upgrade, he passed the position back to Chuck, who also upgraded the guild by one level, as well as adding two "expension of the guild" skill levels. I would have done another level of guild upgrading, but after spending around 3.4 million on the one level and the two "expensions", Chuck didn't have quite enough cash... and Ratel decided that we'd done enough for now anyway. So that was 599 skill points used.

Chuck went back to Prokion Temple in the evening, and got back into our favourite room - and eventually managed to reach level 33, which meant he had enough stat points to put the necessary 12 of them into Dexterity, so that he could learn the stun skill Smite...so that used up 262 skill points. A brief trip to Merac showed a couple of quests there of the riding-around with messages variety, which he attended to - there is also one to kill some Butchers and Pilferers, which can wait. In all Chuck had gone up 104.04% in experience today - and down by 15 skill points, which considering he spent 861 sp can't be bad. And 2707 pet points were enough to get his drake up to level 33, too.

There was less than an hour left, but it seemed time for a change, so MistressSabina, my new level 8 mage, headed out into the fields of Juno to battle the wolves. She reached level nine, and took the trip to visit Bant in Dratan, another message-delivering quest, and then did the repeatable quest to supply Merchant Geres with Jaguar fangs a few times. Ratel, who was in the solo party, rode out to pass across some items for his level 10 healer Thabitha, and gave me horse buffs, which made for an invincible few minutes battling the Jaguars, the buffs add a huge percentage to a low-level character's attack and defence.

Ratel also passed over three heaven stones, a "down payment" for a new pet levelling task for Darth. Ratel's special-blue horse is around level 17 at present, and he'd dearly like to get it up to a mount level, so that he can have two characters with mounts. Which seems good to me. Unlike Stavanic, Ratty does supply the necessary quality stones, rather than just a few tool aids, and a pony or horse that already has a good few levels done.

The plan with MistressSabina will be to make her Kaerella's apprentice soon, and get her up to level 20, and beyond. Unlike my main characters she won't farm any skill points beyond her normal present requirements, plus ones for the Discipline guild, which means that while she'll never be high-level, she can attend "Mad Monster Spawns" and things like that without risking a big skill point loss when killed.

Ah well, a different approach keeps things interesting, yes?

The Black Screen of Randol - May 9th

The start this morning was delayed a bit, as while it was possible to log in to Last Chaos, choose one's server, sub-server, and character, actually attempting to materialise in Randol just gave a permanent black screen. Checking the shoutbox confirmed that it was just the Auzura server that was affected, but that's the only place I'm set up for pet-levelling, so I was a bit stuck.

Luckily when I checked after breakfast, at about 8:40 UK time, someone had just mentioned that the server was back up, so I restarted, and managed to get SirDarth rolling. The black screen had stayed black, though, so anyone waiting for the loading to finish would just have kept on waiting.

SirDarth's horse is doing well, and reached level 35 just after lunch; by the end of the day he was just over three-quarters of the way through that level. SirPerivale's horse is at least halfway through level 29, and running short of quality stones.

There was apparently some sort of dancing get-together last night, though not at a Europe-friendly time, and its success meant that today we were given double experience and skill exp again. So, Chuck went along to Prokion Temple after coffee this morning, to take advantage of this generosity. The Orc Axemen are blue-named now, six levels below him, which means they give no pet experience, but still, with the double-double on, 4400 skill exp and 2566 experience; the Orc Sergeants however are still green-named, and give 6600 skill exp (3300 in normal times, the same as the maximum one would get from Velpist Temple monsters of one's own level) and a more substantial 22762 experience.

So, Chuck sought out an appropriate room with almost all Sergeants, and, before lunch, added 57.63%, 295 skill points, and 1364 pet points. Progress was slowed by a knight called dragonwolf75 coming into my room and taking half the inhabitants for a while, which seemed strange behaviour as there were only just enough Sergeants respawning for one player, but when I had to wall-hug to take a phone call for a few minutes, he went away.

The afternoon session saw Chuck get the rest of the way to level 34, this time in our favourite back room, which may have more Axemen to deal with, but at least has enough that one doesn't end up waiting for respawns or running the whole length of the room to get to the next one. Another 39.72% experience got added, making 97.35% in all; 296 more skill points made 591 as the day's total sp, while another 843 pet points got the day's total up to 2207. The lower number of pet points just shows that a higher proportion of the blue-named Orc Axemen had to be fought, since as I mentioned they now don't give Chuck pet experience.

At level 34 the Orc Sergeants are still green-named for the final time; they go down from giving 3300 skill exp and 11381 experience (or twice that today!) per kill to 2750 and 8536, so going back to them tomorrow, well, it's a bit marginal. But one can never have too many skill points, i suppose, and they are still more generous than monsters outside Prokion, such as the Poison Mists...

The evening session belonged to MistressSabina, who had reached level ten in just the level 5/7 "Apprentice" armour set, without getting any skills at all - which meant she had gathered 157 skill points. That was enough to get almost all her low-level skills to level four. So, after getting taken on as an apprentice by Kaerella, Sabina headed out to the Jaguars for a last necklace or two for Geres, and then moved on to the Sasquatches and the Werewolves - once a couple of levels had been gained, she used a scroll to teleport across to the entrance to Velpist Temple.

There is a favourite upstairs room for me there, too, though I don't go there as often as to the Prokion one - just once per character, basically. It has plenty of level 12 and level 14 zombie types, Ancient and Berserk, the trick is to avoid attracting the level 21 Skeleton Soldiers that also prowl the room.

When Sabina had reached level 15, it was time to head back to town with 165 new skill points to spend, which again got almost everything to level four. 30 points, though, were used to upgrade the Discipline guild to level two, after MistressDomino had transferred the Guild Master position across. To get a guild to its second level the GM has to be at least level 15; for the next level, which costs 60 sp, she'll need to be level 20, and for the one after that, costing 120 sp, she'll need to be level 25.

MistressSabina headed back to Velpist Temple, and this time, instead of heading straight ahead, went off to the left, towards the main room with the "book of life" in it, for the "human tribe" pet quests. She never actually went in there, the room before was quite rich enough. The level 16 Corpse Rangers were very useful, though they did have a habit of coming in two or three at a time, sometimes with a Skeleton Soldier or two as well. But Sabina was wearing better armour now, and when she reached level 17 was able to equip the mage "event weapon", +6, so things went relatively smoothly, and she generally used less small health potions than she picked up.

There were some other players there too, who did tend to attack my targets, but it didn't really matter, with the double experience and skill exp things were moving along nicely. A healer called Susian asked to join my party, so that helped her to get from 13 to 15 - but boy was she reckless, she did tend to rush forward, attract three or four of the high-level types, and die rather quickly, but she kept coming back.

I left when I reached level 19, having added another 191 skill points, enough to take some of the more useful skills to their fifth level. Sabina's drake had reached level four, so it was a pretty productive session, even if Sabina is destined to be a rather minor character in my line-up.

Ratel visited SirDarth down in Merac to pass across 820 quality stones ahead of Darth's levelling stint on his pale blue horse, and also to move some gold from Thabitha to Ratel - which he needed all in one place, as he was buying a level 41 +12 weapon for 55 million, leaving him "as poor as a church mouse", as he commented before signing out for the night. Meanwhile, MistressDomino began a stint in merchant mode. At the time of typing she has sold the moonstone boxes and the skill boosters, now if only she can sell some Easter Eggs too...

Doubling Up - May 10th

MistressDomino did pretty well selling stuff overnight, though the experience boosters didn't sell - it looks as if they weren't too wise an investment, though I should be able to sell them for at least 10% more than I paid for them. The selling went on into the morning too, with a few more item drop boosters put up. Six Easter Eggs got sold at 295,000, which is useful as they are starting to fill up MistressDomino's inventory rather.

Once when I checked up on how things were going, somebody had discarded all five parts of a mage's level 20/22 "Night" armour set, so I swiftly changed out of merchant mode and hit the "pet item pickup" key. The set was part +1 and part +2, with quite a few bloodseals too - and happened to be just what MistressSabina needed. There was also 6000 gold and a couple of herb-harvesting knives, one of them already boosted. It was lucky that those Easter Eggs had been sold by then, or I wouldn't have had room.

Just as SirDarth was about to log out, last thing last night, Ratel got in touch again, with some more quality stones he wanted to transfer to Darth. I suggested that he could pass over his level 18 light blue horse for levelling, and I'd lend him the level 36 horse Darth had been working on - that way he would still have a pet to give him good buffs, and the horse would get a few pet points too. By the time that was done, it was just about midnight for me, so I quickly went off to bed.

SirDarth made a fairly early start this morning, and I was happy to discover that double pet experience was running - so people bought enough special tickets from the merchant house yesterday for this final "tier" celebration. A little later SirPerivale replaced MistressDomino, so my other horse got some benefit then, and over lunch and the early evening food break, moving through level 30.

Before lunch, MrChuckNorris was able to have another session in Prokion Temple, in the room, a widening of the corridor really, with mainly Orc Sergeants. By the time lunch was approaching, Chuck had added 43.26%, 294 skill points, and 3210 pet points. There were a couple of people who made a slight attempt to share the room, but nobody stayed long, thankfully.

It was just as I was starting to think of logging out that Ratel got in touch. He was down in the southwest corner of Merac, in the "Den of Fear", a rather claustrophobic garden area filled with aggressive level 40 Highlanders...and so was the Grand Red Dragon! He wanted Rage to ride down and join him, feeling that between us we could defeat the boss monster, and the Cerebrii it spawns. and, well, you know how persuasive he can be.

So, I switched to Rage, and rode down there. Ratel kindly gave me attack and defence pots and minerals, which I triggered... I was just casting Snare on the GRD when Ratel used his teleport skill on it, but then I just basically attacked the dragon as hard as I could with Flame Arrow, etc, and Snare when it recharged. I did use a health potion, but, with Ratel to tank and provide armour buffs, I never felt I was in danger, and we killed it, and the Cerebrii, and indeed the Highlanders that kept on respawning too. We didn't have any lucky scrolls or item drop boosters on, and we didn't get any rare accessory, but we got experience crystals, lucky scrolls, moonstones, a Medal of Honour I think, and other minor oddments, so we came out ahead.

After that it was a matter of setting SirPerivale up to take advantage of the double pet experience over lunch... and then it was time for MistressSabina to log on, and, after some general trading-about, get her new armour set from MistressDomino. The next thing on her "to do" list was to make the run through the Dratan desert to Prokion Temple. The Clever Foxes of Desert and Sand Golems were run past successfully, and I stopped at the Oasis where Shuraine is to add that to my memory scroll, as it is a place one needs to visit a few times. The only slightly tricky bit of the whole run was getting past one of the level 50 Pandora's Beasts - but Sabina made it to the Prokion Temple entrance, and added that location to her scroll safely.

It didn't take too long to get through the level needed, fighting Ghouls and Mummies, and reach level 20, which meant that the mage "event weapon" appeared in my inventory as if by magic - I was already using a +6 one, though! The "Guardian System" was, therefore, successfully finished, and only about 22 hours after registering for it; Kaerella would get 10 Reputation points, as well, taking her total to a nice round 100.

At 99.90% of the way through level 20, Sabina returned to Randol, just to make sure that there weren't any quests she needed that would expire when she reached 21. There weren't any that were about to vanish, but there were one or two that were current, which she did - after she took her last chance to do the first personal dungeon. Everything except the final boss was blue-named, but the reward of a moonstone remains the same...and MistressSabina ended up 2.92% into level 21, and thus able to move on to her new armour's shirt and skirt.

There was time for Chuck to return to Prokion before the tea break, so, in that favourite back room, he managed to add another 12.93% and 122 skill points, plus 824 pet points, to get his totals for the day up to 56.19%, 416 skill points, and 4044 pet points.

After the break, there was an announcement that an upgrade event was going to start soon, so I sent a package containing five runes of protection 2 across to MistressDomina, who headed out to Prokion Temple, rather than just wait around in town, which was just as well as the start was a bit delayed. Despite the 200%, or double, chance of a successful upgrade, I only had two successes out of my five attempts to upgrade +10 armour pieces to +11, the other three tries ended with failure, and resetting the items to +10 - a good reason not to try upgrading anything higher than that with heaven stones and runes. Still, that improved MD's physical defence by 34, or about 4%, useful when there are Orc Sergeants, and Axemen, around. MistressDomina added 192 skill points, so is now able to process yellow herb leaves and herb trunks, and got 1368 pet points as well.

MistressDomina had picked up two heaven stones, which was nice - but when the first of the inevitable Sunday disconnections came, when I logged back in the "rollback" had removed one of them. But by then the Sunday evening quiz, now at 8:30pm UK time, was getting near, so Rage and Kaerella logged in to the Auzura-4 sub-server, hoping that it would have less lag than A-3, and entered the Quiz Room. Things went okay, thanks to the door being left open - just about everyone got booted out on the "How many eyes does the Barren Eise have?" question, thinking it was five, but we ran back in. Rage, on the older computer, wasn't quick enough to get the ten tool aids, but otherwise she and Kae did well, getting the moonstones and the heaven stones safely.

Sadly the lag was getting worse, and we started getting "The Black Screen of Randol" when logging back in - and Auzura-3 had a couple more disconnections, which, with the extra time taken to reload the game, weren't much fun. I had hoped to let MistressSabina have a final short session, but after the log-in problems, settled for getting SirPerivale back on to pet-level for a bit. And after that, sadly, at least as far as Auzura-3 was concerned, the double experience, skill exp and pet experience had disappeared... I did try and mention it in the shoutbox, particularly when games master aeria_Ks1lent turned up there, but my pair of pet levellers continued just to get a single pet point at a time. Still, by the end of the evening Ratel's horse had reached level 25, and my own horse should just about reach level 31 before I switch across to MistressDomino again, and try to sell a few more Easter Eggs. Ratel reported that the horse I'd lent him had reached level 36, too.

More Double Time - For Some! - May 11th

MistressDomino's overnight selling didn't actually last all that long, as Auzura-1 had a disconnection, but she did take in almost fifty million in gold, mainly I think from selling some Chaos Balls. SirDarth was able to take over quite early in the morning, and on a hunch I logged him in on the Auzura-4 sub-server. I knew from last night that Auzura-3 had lost its "double everything" event early due to its server crashes, but that didn't mean that the other non-PvP sub-server had been similarly hit.

And indeed double pet experience was still working on Auzura-4, so Darth settled in happily there. I would have logged SirPerivale in on the older computer to join him, but that computer had been switched off overnight, and when it was switched on again, I got the "a network cable is disconnected" error message. Luckily when I later took the step of briefly logging SirDarth out, and switching off the modem for a minute, then switching it back on, the cable miraculously reconnected itself, and Peri and Darth were both able to get some pet-levelling done.

With Darth switched to the older computer, and having checked, by Peri killing a Butcher, that the double experience and skill exp were also still running on Auzura-4, there was just time in the later part of the morning for MrChuckNorris to head for Prokion Temple again for about an hour. I would have preferred the widened-corridor room with almost entirely Orc Sergeants, but a Corleone member called JohnnyDepp was busy there, so Chuck settled for our usual back room. 15.80% experience got added, and a useful 141 skill points, so that despite having spent skill points to get the level 30 and 32 skills, his unused skill point total is now at an all-time high; 936 pet points were gained too, two at a time.

Following the usual leisurely lunch break, after a few minutes spent moving loot across to MistressDomino, there was just time for MistressDomina to try a couple of hours in that favourite Prokion Temple back room, to test out her armour set. On top of the double skill exp, she used a couple of those 15% "training spells", so that the Orc Axemen gave 12650 skill exp, and the Orc Sergeants gave 11385. The first hour yielded 384 sp, and the second added a further 403; by my calculations that's the equivalent on average of 171 skill points per hour without any boost, so not as speedy as Chuck... and, if anything, more small health potions were needed than when Chuck was at that level and just wearing +4 armour. I think I'm going to have to use a couple more chaos smelting stones there and see what difference they make, leaving the gloves, circlet and boots at +10 but moving the shirt and skirt from +11 to +12. MistressDomina added 794 skill points in all in the session, and 3912 pet points, which took her drake well into level 22.

After SirPerivale did some pet-levelling again over the early evening food break, during which my horse reached level 32, by popular knightly request it was my rogue, Rage, who appeared for the evening session. Acheron was in touch straight away, with a plan for us to join with a slightly higher level assassin and go to the Tomb of Theos, but when the condition of the Tomb was checked, we found it was set to "hard", at which point very sensibly the assassin decided against it. Acheron and I headed out to the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men instead, on Auzura-4 naturally after I'd told him that the "double everything" was still running there, but, despite logging out and restarting the game, he had crippling lag, and after a few minutes died from it - he went forward in his usual daring way to attract two or three of the Sphinx types, but he never returned.

The party did gain a useful level 40 archer, Francesca001, a member of an Italian guild, with slightly limited English I think - and Ratel, who was also level 40, agreed to join us after Acheron left. So, we made a pretty good team, and it was useful to have a second bow-wielder and some healing, though strangely Francesca never used the obvious skill, Slow Shot, which an archer normally gets at level 38. She did die at least once, but made it to level 41 before she had to leave us. Ratel, who is normally so good at protecting the more vulnerable party members, blamed lag for his inability to stun at the vital moment, though he wasn't suffering from it as badly as Acheron had.

Ratel reached level 41, and briefly returned to town to learn the Shield Strike 2 skill, which increases Shield Strike's chance of successfully stunning a foe to 80%, and the time of the stun to 15 seconds, instead of the earlier Shield Strike's maximum 75% chance and 12 seconds. We continued for the rest of the evening, and by the time we ended, Rage had just reached level 48. In all, Rage went up 84.13%, and got 4 skill points and 3124 pet points, so a pretty good session. Strangely, when alone there and soloing a Fighter she got 440 skill experience - but when a level 40 character in the party was in range as well, she just got 2.

Before we'd started, Rage did get another invitation to a Tomb party, but it was taking place in Auzura-1; I did check there, by killing a Fox just outside Randol, and that subserver didn't have the Sunday bonus still running. They didn't seem inclined to move to A-4...and I didn't see the point of doing without the bonus while it was available. Ratel had been looking for a better weapon for his archer Jacqueline to use, and asked me if I thought 25 million was a good price for a +10 level 29 weapon; I however remembered that I did have a +13 bow not being used, so I was able to lend that to him, or to her, instead.

The bonus did continue all evening, on A-4 at least, and very useful it was today, even if it does mean I am trying to fit in rather more playing time than usual, not to mention starting the pet levelling with SirDarth as early as possible. Ratel's pale blue horse, which he calls Hank in honour of the blue, bouncing Beast in The X-Men, certainly benefited, ending the day more than halfway through level 30. Hank will soon overtake the horse that SirPerivale is working on, which is currently about a fifth of the way through level 32. I expect someone at Aeria will soon notice that Auzura-4 still has the bonus running and switch it off, but we'll have to see what things are like in the morning.

An Afternoon Off - May 12th

I got SirDarth and SirPerivale to work early this morning, but even on Auzura-4 the double experience, skill exp and pet points had vanished. Ah well, all good things must come to an end, and cramming in so much playing time recently was starting to affect my daily routine. Still, it wasn't long before Hank, Ratel's pale blue horse, reached level 31, so is now technically mountable, though as usual we are aiming for level 37.

A few days ago there was an "Almost Cinco de Mayo" special tier event, where if one spent over 1000 aeria points on May 3rd or May 4th one would qualify for a special bonus "Get Lucky" package: 100 item drop boosters, 15 lucky scrolls, 5 lucky spell books, 50 chaos balls, and 10 recovery boxes. This tempted me to spend enough points on a couple of deals; there were a couple of higher tiers too, but I didn't have enough points available to get ambitious. The list of the qualifers was very late appearing, as there had been some problem or other, but eventually a list was posted - and only 17 people were on it, 10 for tier one, 5 for tier two, and 2 for tier 3. And my account, Keerella, wasn't listed.

Luckily the forum thread with the list was open, and I was one of the four people who politely posted that we thought we had qualified. The Aeria Games manager who had made the thread, aeria_ks1lent, did actually check the records, and made sure we received what we had earned, with "a little something extra for the confusion" as well - which means I have two of the "Get Lucky" packages in my records now...so full marks for customer service there. I just suspect that, for a tier promotion lasting two days, more than 21 people would have actually qualified.

Today I didn't really have much time for actual playing, until the evening, as I was out all afternoon, but at least in the later part of the morning I was able to do some mining. MrChuckNorris had acquired a good number of tool aids, so I bought him thirty pickaxes and took him out to the local Juno mine. I then transferred most of the quality stones produced over to SirPerivale, who passed the time while he was waiting getting a few energies from the nearby henge.

Then Kaerella, with the ten tool aids she had won at Sunday's Quiz, bought some of the more ladylike hammers that Geres sells, and headed out there in Chuck's stead. She traded most of her current stock of quality, imperfect and flawed stones across to Peri, and then set to work to replace them.

Peri meanwhile was replaced by MistressDomino, who set up in merchant mode in Auzura-1 selling tool aids, item drop boosters, chaos balls, large attack & defence potions, and Easter eggs. The idea was for her to stay in selling action while I was out for the afternoon, and Kae to keep busy mining as well. When I got back, though, there had been a disconnection at about 3:00pm UK time, judging by the amount of endurance left on Kae's hammer; still, she had restocked her supplies of stones pretty well by then, and MistressDomino had made a few useful sales too.

In the evening, MistressSabina went out to Prokion Temple and added a level, so that she's level 22 now and able to wear the complete "Dark" armour set. 961 pet points got added, and 104.82%, as well as 126 skill points, which quickly got spent on a couple of skill levels. Giving a passing knight a Chakra Shield buff, which just increases movement speed, nearly backfired - sometimes if you buff someone who then aggravates nearby monsters, at least one of the monsters will divert their ire in your direction, and that is what happened, an Orc Sergeant came after me with murder in mind, and I only just managed to retreat to the entrance hall in time.

After that, there was time for a rather short appearance for Rage, beginning with one simple message-delivery quest in Merac which I did first, riding out to visit Rau, After that I moved to the Sphinx types, but there was nobody around of a suitable level to party with, and I didn't stay there very long, before it was time for SirPerivale to go back on duty with the Butchers in Merac. Rage just added 8.20%, including the quest reward, plus a skill point and 323 pet points.

Looking around the shops earlier in Auzura-1's Randol had been productive; I bought a Stone of Shadow accessory for just under eighty million, for added dexterity and evasion, which will probably end up with my titan, and I also picked up a number of items that a couple of people had dropped, just cleaning out their inventories. I'm sure 31 bloodseal gems will come in useful eventually... and there were some useful accessories, a Ring of Power with quite good hit rate stats for one.

I'm afraid I missed the announcement for the Auzura-based "Mad Monster Spawn" - scrolling SirDarth's messages back, there was at least one announcement, though there are usually more than that. Rage did have to log out once, getting "stuck" at the Sphinx Fighter location, maybe that was when the call went out - though there was so much GM spam for a rather complicated offer that it would have been easy to miss anyway. So, MistressSabina will have to wait for next week before heading out to one, by which time she may have got to a slightly higher level. For a change the spawning of the monsters, and the rewards, didn't cause the server to crash.

An Early Finish - May 13th

While I didn't actually get to play this morning, that did mean that SirDarth and SirPerivale were both able to do some useful pet-levelling, with Hank (the horse Darth is levelling up for Ratel) reaching level 32 fairly early on, and passing the halfway mark in level 33 before the end of the evening. Unfortunately, after a time away from the computer screens I returned to find Peri lying dead on the ground. Looking around the reason was easy to discover, a level 50 Blood Frenzy type Pandora's Beast was still nearby.

I logged Rage in to come and deal with it, which she did easily enough, though it didn't drop any gold - which was a bit of a shame, really, as it had killed Peri's horse, which cost, at level 33, 243,936 gold to "unseal". Afterwards Peri returned to the Butchers. An unsealed pet only has 30% health, but generally, unless pet-eating types are around, a pet is either alive or not, so that 30% should be enough to keep the horse going until the next levelling-up, at which point the health will return to 100%.

The new Last Chaos week has begun now, after last night's maintenance and restart for the servers; no more Easter Eggs, instead we are now able to collect various pieces of a "teddy bear" picture. Get a complete set and you can play "rock, paper, scissors" apparently, with the chance to win a free costume to meld onto your armour. I'm not sure how big the chance is, but time will tell. What I've found is that the middle piece of the bear, piece five, seems to be the hardest to get. Some of the recent changes to class skills have, they say, been undone, though I don't think that means that Peri will once again be able to fight Berserkers even when he has a high level of Armour Increase from his pet horse.

The afternoon session was just long enough for MrChuckNorris to reach level 35 in Prokion Temple, in the corridor-room with mainly Orc Sergeants. Fellow Norcaine guildie Legacy was there when I arrived, taking a break, so I started fighting the Sergeants, and took a brief break myself when he returned to the keyboard. He didn't stay long, and after swapping a particular piece of the "teddy bear" puzzle I had for a couple he had spares of, he departed, and the room was all mine.

While Chuck was level 34, the Sergeants gave 8536 experience and 2750 skill exp (with the blue-named Orc Axemen giving 1283/1650), so still a lot of skill exp by normal standards; when Chuck levelled up, that fell to just 1896 experience and 2200 skill exp (with the Axemen on 1283/1100), so it was time to leave the Temple, and head down south to the Poison Mists. They only give a regular amount of skill exp, 880 at Chuck's current level, but 12681 experience is a useful amount, while the single Elite Poison Mist gives 1144 skill exp at present, and 38045 experience, which is a substantial chunk. The spot is now on Chuck's memory scroll, and I'm sure he'll head there quite often - when not questing in Merac, that is.

Chuck's session had added 28.44% experience, 186 skilll points, and 1796 pet points - which were enough to get Chuck's drake into level 33. Back in town, Chuck was able to learn the first level of Toughness, for 148 skill points, which decreases the amount of damage he takes from critical or deadly hits by about 80. The second level of that comes along when Chuck reaches level 52. So, even after learning that skill, he was still ahead on skill points for the afternoon.

The evening session was a short one, but MistressDomina was able to head for the good old upstairs back room in Prokion Temple. She took a pack of five chaos smelting stones with her, to see if we could make life a bit easier for her there - after all she'll be spending an awful lot of time there over coming weeks. Taking her shirt and skirt from +11 to +12 didn't seem to improve matters a whole lot, so I used the other three to get the other armour parts from +10 to +11. It's an expensive set of armour now, but it just about gets the job done.

A titan called Diciple was there when I arrived; I did ask if there was room for me as well, as he didn't seem to be using the whole of the assembled multitude of Orcs, and he didn't reply... so I stayed. He left before long, still without saying anything, and I used a super skill pill (the kind that double the skill exp) plus a 15% training spell (alias just "skill pill"), thus raising the skill exp per Orc Axeman from 5500 to 11825, and the Orc Sergeant skill exp from 4950 to 10642, for a busy hour.

Another titan called Theman1 came in after a while, apologising for coming into the room but saying the whole temple was crowded. I said that I was using skill boosts, but we could see how things went. He kindly decided before too long that there wasn't room for him as well as me, and, rather than "f up" my skill point farming, he left. So, after I had finished my "power hour", and continued on a bit until I was ready to log out, I messaged him that the room was now free, and he quickly returned and took it over.

MistressDomina added 392 skill points during the hour, the equivalent of 182 without the boosts, and in the whole session added 473 skill points, and 1444 pet points, so that her drake is level 23 now. She is now getting close to actually starting to hoard skill points for (far) future use, she just needs the top two levels of Expert Alchemy now, for 103 + 120 sp. Chuck may have twenty thousand to play with, I want her to have rather more than that, sigh...

At eight o'clock, UK time, I had to log out, though later on SirPerivale was able to grab another half hour's pet levelling for his horse; SirDarth kept going throughout. The next few days are going to be pretty busy for me, so I won't be able to play as much Last Chaos as usual, but at least the pet levelling will be able to continue, and the evening sessions, though even that gets truncated on Sunday. I'll be hoping to sneak at least a partial afternoon session on Friday and Saturday, but that depends on matters outside my control.

Zombies in the Evening - May 14th

SirDarth managed to start early, but SirPerivale got rather delayed, as the installation of AVG antivirus, always flakey, finally threw its rattle out of the pram, demanding restarts every time it updated, and updating every time it restarted. Eventually it had to be uninstalled, after I'd grabbed its slightly more nag-oriented free competitor Avira.

So, SirPerivale was now down to only about 800 pet points ahead, with SirDarth, who has a higher hit rate, closing down the gap a little - and of course when Peri went off duty so that I could actually play, then Darth started to open up a lead. Both horses reached level 34 by mid-morning, so that they both get through seven hunger points per five minutes, so it's lucky that both knights have plenty of quality stones now.

SirPerivale did get killed by a Pandora's Beast earlier in the morning, but luckily his horse survived - it just depends who gets attacked first, if the pet-handler is attacked and killed first then the pet will just safely vanish, but if the pet happens to catch the Beast's attention first, then an expensive unsealing of a dead pet will soon be needed.

Around five in the evening, Peri had a visitor - the Grand Red Dragon arrived directly overhead! I don't think anyone was actually killing the Butchers at any great speed, perhaps if there isn't a more interestingly active place for the GRD to visit, he will actually teleport in to pet levellers. I did use the trade channel to ask if there were any GRD hunters around, as I think it has a longer range than the normal chat, but didn't get any response. It was time for Peri to think about logging out, anyway, and for Darth to switch over to the older computer.

One thing that the makers of Last Chaos, usually referred to as T-Ent, seem to have got right in the latest patch is a cure for the "run out of memory" crash bug, as I seem to have avoided that since the latest maintenance. On the older computer sometimes it would happen after only two hours or so, and a full day's run on the newer computer was unwise, a restart of the game halfway through was, recently, a good idea.

Anyway, after the food break I was generally moving items to MistressDomino, and while Rage was transferring a few things across, I got a message from Razva125, checking on Rage's level (48) and then inviting me to join a Tomb team on Auzura-1. This seemed like a good idea, so off I went, slightly delayed by having to grab some extra potions, and getting that old stand-by, a crash when trying to load the Dratan map.

So, that is where I spent the evening, in a team that varied between three and six people, plus a few other people who were too low to be in the party without being "capped" - the level 35 rogue Phinas, the titan Soulbeast, the mage MageQueen who went from level 17 to 18 (apparently the player is better known as Titanlord), and a couple of knights. Quite often it was these low-level people who were doing the actual luring, and they did a good job. Razva125 is a level 53 titan, who spent a fair part of the evening afk; Zulu was a level 53 royal knight, so while he stayed around I got the Concentration buff. Brolly was a level 48 elementalist-type sorcerer, while StrongLT, a specialist sorcerer, is level 51 now. Demona was a very useful level 43 archer, Karoz a level 47 titan, the slightly dubiously-named CmenLover a level 43 titan, Giant7 a level 47 titan, and the last person to join, before it was time for me to log out, was a level 57 temple knight, Ardorblade.

So, we fought the level 100 Screaming Zombies, and we did okay - I often took heavy damage, but was able to get to the left-hand wall before my health got too perilously low, thankfully. LADYxSERENITY was soloing the Zombies for a few minutes, as archers often do, with a lot of "kiting", but when we were down at one stage to 3 people, I mentioned our levels, and she didn't cap us, at level 53, she fitted right in... so it was just as well we'd been apologetic earlier when she complained that we were ks-ing her. As I said, we were so used to all fighting the same Zombie, even if we weren't all in the same party, it was automatic....for some of us, anyway!

A number of people levelled up, including Demona and, through the use of a platinum blessed iris and skill boosters, CmenLover. I didn't - but I did add 81.81% experience, a skill point, and 1212 pet points. As usual the drops from the Zombies, except for gold, were very poor, I don't think anyone got any armour. I may have got a moonstone box, perhaps. Only three people, as far as I noticed, got pieces of the "Bear Wendy" puzzle, and each time it was piece five, the one that I don't have. Both Chuck and MistressDomina have the other eight, but not that one... so maybe I'll need to return to the Tomb of Theos a few more times if I'm to complete the set. As usual for such drops, most of the pieces are on sale for high prices in town, from 400,000 gold up to a million or more each.

Since Rage's adventures meant that SirPerivale was offline for about four hours, SirDarth and Ratel's pet horse Hank have now indeed taken the lead, and by late evening were on level 35 - so just this level and the next one to go! SirPerivale's horse won't reach that level until the middle of tomorrow morning, by my calculations. It looks as if I won't be able to play until the evening again tomorrow, so Peri will have plenty of time to make more progress.

The Undead Invasion - May 15th

It was a long LC-less day, but at least SirDarth and SirPerivale managed to get some pet levelling done. Darth at last got Ratty's horse into level 36, which means it gets through 8 starvation points every five minutes... so that a full 100 hunger bar lasts very slightly over an hour, though from the number of times I click the hotkey to feed a quality stone to the horse it feels more like half that time. Tomorrow should be the end of that particular slog, so that Darth can go back to feeding a less greedy pet for a while.

I had a couple of emails from Aeria, regretting that I hadn't been around lately and tempting me back with a free 1000 aeria points. A nice idea, and free aeria points are always welcome, but a bit strange when it applies to SirDarth's account, since he has been online on Last Chaos about 14 hours a day for almost every day for the last few weeks. "We have not seen you here for a while", they say. They should perhaps look harder, though it's nice to get some more ap as the account was running very low.

Looking at the recent announcements this morning, I see that there was a Quiz, like the Sunday evening one - but taking place at 3:00 am UK time this morning, so that I missed it. Followed by an upgrade event, sigh... The worst thing is, I can imagine myself setting my alarm to take part in future weeks if they make having a Quiz then, with the usual rewards, a regular thing.

At around 5:30 there was an announcement that GM JediMike was going to do one of his old school treasure hunts in half an hour, so not long after that I stood Peri down, and logged MistressSabina in. I headed down to the south-east corner of Juno first, as I had a quest to visit Hunter Dranore near there - I added the location to my memory scroll, and then headed north, fighting a few Drakes, which are still green-named to Sabina, with a view to getting the north-east corner onto her scroll too.

When the official announcement came up, with the locations for possible treasure, I noticed that one set of coordinates was pretty close to the south-east spot I'd memorised, so I teleported down there, and managed to run in the right direction - and saw stuff lying on the ground! As ever, newly-spawned items say they are "reserved for another player", but I was soon picking stuff up as fast as I could. Other people arrived, but I did still see some items vanish when their time expired. I kept on hitting the "pick" button as fast as I could, and the "pet item pickup" one too... and by the time the final drops were picked up, I'd gained 19 large defence potions, 19 skill point boosters, 21 large attack potions, 21 item drop boosters, probably about 40 tool aids, and 7 heaven stones, not to mention plenty of the minor items such as potions of haste and the small mana and HP recovery potions. So, a nice result there!

Razva125 did get in touch when Rage logged in, but had just finished a session in the Tomb - he was off for a few hours sleep. He did suggest that I could go to the Auzura-6 Tomb and join the party he'd been in, but I really didn't have long enough for that to be a good idea.

So, I went to the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men. A level 36 titan called Ayax turned up before long and I teamed with him a bit, until he logged out, then before long the level 34 titan Theman1, who MistressDomina had met recently in Prokion Temple, arrived, and also wanted to be in a party with me. Unfortunately his lag was very bad, and all he could do was give me the added attack buff and watch, but he seemed to enjoy the way I was able to kill the local monsters.

That came to a slightly premature end when Zenderfly got in touch; Zen has now joined the Auzura Norcaine guild, just to make communication easier, and I discovered that he is actually a titan here, because he couldn't be bothered to change the character to a mage when starting up. He was asking if I had any useful items for Itura over on Cariae, so I switched across to MistressDomino over there, and passed over my level 55/57 set, and a level 53 +12 weapon I had, so Itu will look the part when she goes into monster combos in future.

Back on Auzura, GM Stratos sent out an urgent plea for assistance against an undead invasion on Auzura-5, and MistressSabina answered the call - as before, the first spot was Burbank Mill, and after that there were attacks on both gates of Randol. I did get pk'd (player-killed) by xXGematriaXx out at the Mill, which seems a bit against the spirit of things, but assisted with Curse and Sloth and Flame Storm and generally attacked things a hundred or so levels above me. The deadliest creatures were the Flutons, though luckily they turned up in the arena, where there isn't a death penalty. When I logged out GM Stratos was holding a race to a far corner of Juno, with people able to kill other racers... as Sabina doesn't have a horse, I left them to it. She was down by a skill point, due to death penalties, but had added 14.84% to her experience.

By the end of the evening SirDarth will have got that pale blue horse about a third of the way through its final level, so tomorrow ought to finish that job. SirPerivale's horse is approaching two-thirds of the way through level 35, anyway, so isn't that far behind. Rage was up by 14.37% from her time in Dratan, which had been enough to take her to level 49; she had added a skill point, and 727 pet points, so her horse is pretty close to levelling up as well.

More Invaders Repulsed - May 16th

SirDarth and SirPerivale made an early start again - and just after three in the afternoon Ratel's blue horse finally reached level 37, so that was one task finished. Ratty was online then, so we were able to exchange Hank for the horse-in-training of mine that he'd been using as a pet, and also move across his existing natural-colour mount to his titan, Argoth, before he had to vanish.

I'd been looking forward to levelling a pet that didn't need feeding so much and so often, but I'd forgotten that I still had the horse Ratel had been borrowing to finish - and that one was in level 36 too, so business continued much as ever. SirPerivale's horse is in level 36 too, so I'm certainly getting through the quality stones at an alarming rate.

A friend phoned me up to say he'd be coming round to collect some things at some point in the afternoon, so I decided to fit in at least an hour in Prokion Temple before lunch for MistressDomina. The back room I like was in use, even in the morning (well it is the weekend), but the corridor room not far away was free, and indeed I don't think I saw any other players while I was there. I started a (100% bonus) super skill pill and a (15% bonus) training spell or "skill pill", and settled down for an hour with the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants. Unfortunately this hour did get interrupted by a phone call to say my friend would be coming round in half an hour, and by his visit, but I did manage to get 312 skill points in the hour, and a total of 345 before I had to log out for lunch - with SirPerivale taking over the computer of course. 1019 pet points were gained, too.

After lunch, the plan was to take MrChuckNorris to the Poison Mists, after doing a Merac quest to kill some Pilferers and Bandits; on my way out of Merac Caron I picked up a quest to kill some Berserkers too, which was handy as all three types hang out together.

I'm not entirely sure how Emily462, a level 23 healer, got onto Chuck's Friends list, but she got in touch and asked for some help with levelling, so I invited her to join me in Merac. She didn't actually help with the fighting, just kept clicked on Chuck to follow me around... which generally worked fine, but when I opened a Pandora's Box and unleashed a level 50 Beast, she was a bit too near, and got attacked, even though I was the one attacking it. She died, but the good news was that Chuck was able to kill it, even though it is 15 levels above him - and it dropped about 40,000 gold.

So, I continued there with the Berserkers and Bandits, who couldn't do Chuck any harm, and eventually added 11.68% experience - I had stopped on 10%, but the quest reward for the Berserkers added the extra. Chuck also got 29 skill points and 933 pet points; he's not a very speedy pet leveller, as titans hit hard rather than fast.

SirDarth had released a level 50 Pandora's Beast as well, late in the morning, and Rage had dealt with that one. It didn't drop any cash, just a "Wendy Bear" piece. A few minutes later another Box had appeared, but thankfully when Darth cracked it open it just gifted him with five physical defence minerals.

There was a general swapping-around of items after Ratel got his horse; most of my characters are keeping three of each part of the "Wendy Bear", and passing any extras across to MistressDomino. The pieces I am short of are 5 and 8, the others, well, I'll have to see how they sell, later.

After the usual food break, MistressSabina headed for Prokion Temple - only to get interrupted by a plea for assistance from GM Stratos, saying that Auzura-1 was suffering a new undead invasion. So, naturally, I dashed over to see if I could help, taking the precaution of spending my newly-acquired skill points before actually doing anything dangerous. Getting the fifth level of a passive skill that increased my defence seemed a good idea, though of course it wasn't much use when a Fluton turned its attention on me. It was fun, but I ended up a couple of percent down on the experience side, with death penalties outweighing the experience earned.

The invasion was, I guess, repulsed in the end, though the arena was ludicrously full of Dark Treants at one stage, with a few Flutons in there too. It seems to me that a lot of the players who "answer the call" are fairly low level, which may well annoy the high level people who have to do the actual work...

After that Sabina returned to Auzura-3 and Prokion Temple, and fought enough Mummies, mainly, to go up to level 23 - that was a total gain of 76.97%, 94 skill points, and 767 pet points.

That just left time for MrChuckNorris to actually spend a little time with the Poison Mists in Dratan desert - just 8.25% experience, 10 skill points, and 256 more pet points, to bring his totals for the day to 19.93%, 39 sp, and 1189 pet points.

After that, well, it was time for SirPerivale to return to his pet-levelling duties against a succession of Butchers, while SirDarth continued to fight his Berserker. By the end of the evening, it looks as if Darth's horse will just need another three hours, and Peri's one about ten... but I don't know if there'll be enough time tomorrow, starting in the evening, for even Darth's to reach level 37, particularly if time out has to be taken for the usual Sunday Quiz. Still, it will be nice to get those out of the way; I suppose MistressSabina will want one of them as her mount, I must see if Basher has a need for the other one.